


Whatever She Is

by crossingwinter



Series: The Joy is in the Getting [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Half-Blood Prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She supposes she could at least feel ok about the fact that she feels bad wanting Harry when she is with Dean.  That she feels like a bad person.  </p><p>It doesn’t stop her, of course.  But part of her wonders if she ever could be a good person, after the Diary.</p><p>Harry makes her believe that she can.</p><p>----</p><p>A series of short ruminations from the youngest Weasley.  Set during Half-Blood Prince</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever She Is

She’s almost surprised at how normal she feels when she breaks up with him.

When she broke up with Michael, she felt weirdly empty for days.  She had hated feeling empty. 

She supposes that was why she had gotten together with Dean in the first place.  He had smiled at her one evening across the fireplace, and she had followed him up the boy’s staircase, pretending to need to get something out of Ron’s trunk. 

They had ended up snogging for half an hour outside of the second year dormitory, and, as if he had some sort of big-brotherly sensor, Ron’s voice had disrupted them right when Dean’s hand had slipped up to her left breast.  They had leapt apart, and Ginny had thrown herself into the second year dorm, which had been (thankfully) empty.

She admits that it does feel strange to some extent, especially when she inadvertently thinks of him naked, or wonders what he would think of something funny that Daniel Moffat said during potions, but she does not feel empty.

She kind of enjoys not feeling empty. 

* * *

On some days, she still hears Tom’s voice in her head and it terrifies her.

Usually, he is saying something supportive, like how kind she is, or how sweet, or how subtle.

Nothing shakes her so profoundly, nothing makes her feel so helpless.

She tried explaining it to Michael once, when she had been thirteen and had no idea what on earth she was doing.  He had tried to understand.  Truly he had.  But he hadn’t known what the fuck to do with her, and Tom’s voice had come back, saying how she deserved someone better than him.

She did not see how she could deserve someone better.

She had dated Michael for almost another year before she had the sense to end it. 

* * *

She likes being Seeker just fine when they need her to Seek for them.  She isn’t half bad at it either.

But she likes Chasing better.  She likes being part of a team.  She is used to being part of a team.  She couldn’t not be, what with the six brothers and all.

She loses herself in the physicality of Chasing, the violent dodges and acute awareness of where everyone is at all times.  She enjoys the bursts of speed, executed with precision and accuracy.  She adores poking the bruises on her arm if she catches the Quaffle wrong, and loves the cracking in her shoulders when she body checks her opponents.  Even if it does get them a penalty shot.

She sometimes misses the controlled dives of Seeking, but they happen too little during games and but she’s been bad at waiting for most of her life.

Harry’s the only thing she’s ever waited for that ever had the possibility of paying off.

* * *

She’s always wanted to be confident like Bill.

She’s always wanted to be creative like Charlie.

She’s always wanted to be righteous like Percy.

She’s always wanted to be witty like Fred, observant like George, loyal like Ron.

On bad days, she thinks she can’t no matter how hard she tries.

* * *

She doesn’t know how Ron is able to make her want to throttle him and hug him all in one go.

She hates him for wanting to protect her innocence.  She doesn’t think anything can make someone lose innocence more than being possessed by the most evil man of all time.  Sex doesn’t have anything on it, that’s for certain.

But she loves him for it too.

She loved it when he left for Hogwarts the first time.  She had the house all to herself, and she didn’t have to fight with mum about bedtimes.

She hated being alone.  Even Bill’s and Charlie’s sporadic visits couldn’t sate her longing for company.

She loved Ron for bringing Harry Potter into her life.

She hated him for not sharing him.

The only thing she can’t love Ron for as much as she hates him is what he is doing to Hermione. 

She finds Hermione crying into a pillow one Saturday afternoon, and she doesn’t have to ask why.  She just knows.  And she wants to punch him for it.

For someone who is so unbelievably ridiculous about her having any sort of physical contact with the opposite sex, he is remarkably dense about the effects his actions might have on the one that actually loves him.

It’s a thought that makes her cringe.

* * *

Sometimes he just looks so lonely and the only thing she wants is to let him know that he isn’t alone.

* * *

The thing that impresses her so tremendously about Luna is that Luna never looks as though she is about to cry.

Luna sits there, as serenely as if she were having tea with her maiden aunt, as if nothing in the world could disturb her, even though Travis Bradley has just jinxed her hair to stand on end and laughs with his friends about how now Looney Lovegood looks like her name now. 

Ginny would have fought.  But she might have, if you looked very carefully, looked as though she were going to cry.

Ginny’s wand is in the air and before Bradley knows that she’s in the room, he’s got bat wings surrounding his face and he’s cursing because he knows that it’s her that did it.

She’ll probably get detention again, but she doesn’t care.

Luna smiles at her, and her throat tightens.

* * *

She wakes up in the morning drenched in cold sweat. 

She’s used to them by now, the nightmares.  She’s had them for years, as often as she didn’t.  The summer she turned twelve, her mother had put her to bed every night in Egypt with a potion for dreamless sleep.  But she hadn’t taken any with her to school, and a gentle-voiced stranger spoke in her ear when she slept.

She hadn’t had nightmares when she slept over with Michael or Dean.

She does not remember the details of this particular dream, but she knows enough of the feeling in her gut to know that it was a Chamber Dream.

She waits for her heart to stop racing, then climbs out of bed and goes to her mirror.  She opens her makeup pouch and begins to lighten the dark circles under her eyes.  When she is content with what she sees, she smiles.

It does not reach her eyes, and she knows that the day will be a difficult one.

* * *

She buys new dress robes in Hogsmeade for Slughorn’s Christmas party.  They are the sort of robes that would make her mother intensely horrified that her little girl might even consider wearing them, all slinky and with an extremely low neckline.  But she isn’t buying them for her mother. 

She is buying them for herself.  She loves the way that Dean’s eyes bug out of his head when she wears things that show that she does, in fact, have breasts (even if they are quite small).  Her chest is too often hidden beneath school sweaters, or clothes that had once belonged to Fred or George. 

She likes being reminded that she’s a girl.

She also likes watching Harry do his best to ignore that fact.

She feels like a bad person when she admits that to herself.

* * *

She’s been scared of breaking limbs in a conceptual way most of her life.  The way that comes from fearing pain, or not trusting that you’ll be healed up nice and quick.

After May she fears breaking her ankle again.  She never wants to be trapped by her own incapacities again, not when he needs her help.

* * *

Even though she thinks he’ll never fall in love with her, she’s still glad he doesn’t stare at Phlegm the way that Ron does.

It makes her proud that she’s been in love with someone who is not quite as moronic as her brother. 

It almost makes her hopeful.  But she is determined not to think that maybe he will come around one day.

She knows he won’t.

* * *

Bill’s shredded face horrifies her.

Not because it’s ugly, not because he almost died, not because he leapt in Greyback’s way to protect her.

Because she will never see Bill’s smile again.

Bill’s smile kept her going the summer after the Chamber.  His laughter ringing through Egyptian tombs kept her from being scared of dark enclosed spaces.

When she was really little, when she barely knew Bill because he was at school, she used to draw pictures of the two of them to send to him, so that he wouldn’t forget her.  Baby Ginny has bright red hair.  Bill’s hair was red too, but more importantly, he was grinning broadly, because that was what she remembered of her oldest brother.

He still has them.  She found them when she was helping him unpack his things from Egypt.  They had been covered in sand and dust, but you could still make out the tuft of red hair on her head, and the broad white grin on his.

* * *

She smiles when she gets the letter from Charlie, telling her to buck up and that it will all be all right in the end.  He writes that Dean Thomas sounds like a stupid fellow to him, if he can’t keep his baby sister happy, and that she’s well shut of him.

It makes her laugh, the concept that Dean isn’t good enough for her.

Charlie’s handwriting is scratchy.  Bill’s is fluid, Fred’s is erratic, George’s is calculated, Ron’s is illegible.  Percy’s (when she saw him write) was as clear as typeset. 

But Charlie’s looks as though he hasn’t held a quill in ages.

He probably hadn’t.  He is probably too busy with the Dragons.

The letter is exceptionally unoffending, extremely neutral (apart from the spurts of familial loyalty).  He writes to her out of duty, rather than out of the desire to do so. 

Charlie’s always been away in his own little world, Mum’s always said.  He is the kind of person that stares off in the distance, lost in thought; the kind of person who gets on better with animals than people; the kind of person who doesn’t know how to connect to a little sister ten years his junior.

Bill had always been friendly to her—her favorite big brother.  But she’d always been nervous around Charlie, scared of him, and his quiet in a house of loud.

When they’d been in Egypt before second year though, she’d realized how much she loved his quiet.  How much she appreciated his distance.  She never told him that though.

Letters from him always made her smile, because she knew that he was trying.  And that she was trying too.

* * *

She does not know how they can stand being in the kitchen in the August heat.  Her mother’s face is bright red, Hermione’s hair is pulled back—which is impressive since it is puffier than ever in the humid kitchen—Fleur looks daintily collected, leaning over a cookbook.

She supposes she should help them, but she hears Fred and Ron arguing about Quidditch and decides that there are enough cooks in the kitchen, without her stepping all over them.

Besides, she always liked Quidditch arguments more than chopping onions without magic, anyway.

* * *

The only thing she doesn’t regret about the D.A. being over is that she does not have to be in the same room as Justin Finch-Fletchly.  She doesn’t know why it is so hard to be near him, of all the people whose petrification she was responsible for, but it is.

He smiles at her every time he sees her, and she smiles back.  It’s never a warm smile, never a friendly one.

Colin thought it was so cool being petrified that he actively thanks her for it sometimes, much to her chagrin and humiliation.  Hermione brushes it off, saying it wasn’t her, and Penelope Clearwater doesn’t spend too much time near her ex-boyfriend’s younger sister.  Nearly-Headless Nick found a break from the monotony of death quite nice.

But Justin seems to remember quite clearly the terror of seeing a fully-grown basilisk slithering down the corridor towards him.

She wonders if it keeps him up at night.  If it haunts his dreams, the way that it haunts hers.

* * *

You grow up fast when you almost die.  That’s how she’s always been able to justify feeling older than everyone around her.  That’s how she’s able to justify that she has sex for the first time when she’s fourteen (almost fifteen) and leaps into sex quickly in her next relationship.

She often feels older than Ron, sometimes even Hermione.

Never Harry though.

* * *

She knows the minute that Harry starts thinking of her _that way_.

His face is sterner than Ron’s when he catches her and Dean snogging.

She sees the way that his jaw tightens, his fists clench, and his pupils dilate.  She sees the way that he can hardly look at her.

She wonders briefly if she’s imagining it, then if she should break up with Dean.

She decides instead to shout at Ron, because it’s none of his damn business whom she snogs anyway.

And it might prove useful one day, when Harry gets over it and snogs her.

* * *

The validation that comes from walking through the doors to Professor Slughorn’s office makes her feel as though she could conquer the world.

Even though she laughs with Harry every time he schedules a Quidditch practice to overlap with the meetings, she gets a tinge of joy that she can go when Ron can’t. 

It makes it all worth it, because if she can convince Slughorn, she can convince anyone.

* * *

It does not surprise her that Ron watches her more closely when she is dating Harry.

She can’t bother to be mad at him for it though.  She knows he just doesn’t want her to muck it up. 

She doesn’t want that either.

* * *

She decides that she wanted Luna to get married first.  Well, if not married, at least to _find_ someone first.  Luna deserves love most of anyone she knows, and she knows it will take a very special man to love Luna the way that she needs to be loved.

But Ginny still wants to find someone before Ron comes around and gets with Hermione.

* * *

She envies Fleur her ease.

Bill’s fiancée carries herself so easily, as though being that attractive to every man in the room is the most natural thing in the world. 

Ginny knows she’s pretty.  She knows that boys like her just fine.  Indeed, she knows that she can turn on the sex appeal as easily as the part-Veela.  She learned that from Dean when she had given him eyes across the common room and he had pointedly crossed his legs.

But Fleur is just so calm about it. 

Ginny still sometimes feels as though she’s a little girl, pretending to have a sex drive because she doesn’t know what it is.

* * *

She likes sex with Dean infinitely better than sex with Michael.  It’s funny, because Dean had been the virgin and Michael hadn’t.

She’d been able to tell Dean what to do.  He needed her to, or else he would have been completely at a loss.  Michael had insisted he’d known what he was doing when he hadn’t, really.  She supposes that was what had precipitated their break up, more than the Quidditch match.

She is very glad that Dean was discreet.  Michael hadn’t been, but she figured that no word would have reached Ron from Ravenclaw.  Word would definitely reach Ron from the next bed over.

She likes Dean’s hands, and the way they fit over her breasts, over her rear.  She likes the way he runs his hands through her hair when she kisses him, the way he tells her that he needs her when he comes.  Never love.  Always need.  She liked that.

There isn’t really love with Dean, and she’s glad that he never tells her he loves her.  She wouldn’t know what to say, especially since she spends half of her relationship with him sensing Harry’s bottle green eyes following her bottom when she walks.

On the worse days, the days when she cannot put any efforts into self control, she wonders what sex with Harry would be like. 

* * *

She can’t really hate Percy for what he did.  Percy has always been so convinced of his own rectitude that it has always made it hard for others to get along with him.  She _is_ disappointed in him, though.

She doesn’t blame him for not coming back either.

She wouldn’t know how to come back if she’d done what he did. 

* * *

She doesn’t think that they notice, but she’s taken to studying with Neville and Luna in the library. 

They probably haven’t—only Hermione really studies in the library.  They meet there so they can study with Luna, who would not be able to subtly blend in with the wave of Gryffindors in the common room even if she tried.

She likes them, Neville and Luna.  She’s glad about the D.A. having happened, because she wouldn’t have liked them nearly as much as she does if it hadn’t been for the club.  They make her feel like she belongs. 

Ron is really bad at including her.  He always has been.  He’s always hated that she gets more attention than he does. 

But he has the friends that she wanted for such a long time, and he won’t share them.  She hates it that he won that one.

But she’s glad of it in the end, especially because she thinks, for the first time, she has friends who understand her, friends who support her, friends who hide their brokenness as much as she does.

* * *

She was four when she first hears The Story of Harry Potter.

She had just come back from a playdate with Luna Lovegood.  Luna’s mother had made them chocolate milk and had toasted the mysterious Harry Potter.  Luna solemnly toasted as well, mimicking her mother’s every movement. 

Ginny was embarrassed not to know who Harry Potter was.  The minute she and her mother depart the Rook-shaped house, she demands to know who he is and why he is important.

She didn’t really understand the story the first time.  How could she, as young as she was.

But she remembers that when she fell asleep that night, she pretended that Harry Potter was saving her from a horrible wizard (who bore disturbing resemblances to Charlie).

It was something that became a part of her nightly ritual, wondering how she and Harry would be friends and, later, how she and Harry would get married.

It made his being friends with Ron that much more mortifying.  He _never_ could find out about her childhood fantasies.  He would _hate_ her if he did.

Even as she begged her mother to go and find him on the train at the tender age of ten, she knew that it could end very, very badly.  What if he wasn’t as good as she had imagined him? He was as handsome, she supposed, based on her what she remembered of him from the platform.  Though she didn’t much fancy the round glasses.  Maybe he’d get horn-rimmed ones like Percy’s someday.  She liked horn-rimmed glasses.   But what if he wasn’t as nice, or as smart, or as funny, or as loving?

She learned the next year that he was more than she had ever imagined.

* * *

It was very hard not to think of Harry naked when they are in the locker rooms after practice.

Sure, the boys and girls have separate showers, but she also gets to see him with a soft white towel wrapped firmly around his waist, knowing that nothing is underneath…

And the muscles of his torso aren’t half bad.  They are understated.  There when he flexes, but not visible when he stands normally.  She likes that tremendously.  She supposes that they must have come from dodging a dragon on a broom, swimming for an hour under the lake, or simply running around like a maniac when there is something to be done.

She has to be careful of looking at him when Dean is nearby.  She knows Dean wouldn’t like it. 

She supposes that she shouldn’t like it either.

She certainly shouldn’t wonder what sex with Harry would be like.  What it would be like, for example, to lick her way down the center of his flexed abdominal muscles, what it would be like to do away with the towel around his waist (and the one around her own middle) and press herself up against him, what it would be like for him to be pushing his way inside her—gently at first, but increasingly quick and urgent by the end of it, what it would sound like when he called her name (or groaned it into her neck).

She really shouldn’t wonder what that would be like.

* * *

She watches Harry intensely all summer, wondering if she will see her anguish reflected in him.

She supposes she misses Sirius because she can’t help it.  He was such a fantasticly interesting person, such a smart person, such a tragic person.

She hates that the world took another parent away from Harry.

She hates that he feels it so deeply, but can’t share his pain with any of them.

She hates that she feels like she doesn’t have the right to feel sad about the man who was practically a stranger, but who meant the world to someone she cared about.

She’d had a dream once, sometime last year, before the Harry and Cho debacle, but after she let Michael finger her behind the Greenhouses.  She had dreamed that she and Harry had had three children, all with bright green eyes, and that Sirius had been wrestling with them joyfully the way that her father had once wrestled with her brothers, while they had looked on.

* * *

She tries not to be bitter when Hermione goes up to Ron’s and Harry’s room without her.

She knows that she is not in their little band of three.  But she fought just as much as they in the Department of Mysteries, and she did a damn good job at it, given that of the four of them, she was the most lucid after Harry.  (And after Neville, but he isn’t part of the discussion in her mind just then, anyway.)

Whatever it is they are discussing can’t be so important that she can’t hear it, can it?

And surely she’s trustworthy, isn’t she?  She’s Ron’s sister, for fuck’s sake.  And she’s as good as a sister to Hermione.  And Harry…well… She is whatever she is to Harry.

Surely that merits inclusion, at least in some things?  Surely she deserves to be included in more than just fighting, shouldn’t she?

But Ron has never been good at including her, and Harry probably wants to keep her out of the way of trouble because he’s idiotically noble sometimes.  And Hermione…

Hermione does what her brothers do: love her, and support her, and quietly leave her behind when she isn’t wanted.

* * *

She told Hermione that she broke up with Dean because he helped her through the portrait hole.  That’s what she told Dean too.

She isn’t sure that either of them believes her, and that doesn’t surprise her.  It’s a pretty bad lie, she has to admit to herself.

She had supposed, at one point, towards the end of her fourth year, that they could have been good together.  But she would have had to train the helping out of him.

Dean’s biggest problem was that he was the perfect gentleman.  He needed to take care of her, needed to prove to everyone that he wasn’t as much of a deadbeat as his father.  He, Dean Arnold Thomas, would be the Best Boyfriend Ever So Help Him God.  He needed to be the epitome of Gryffindor chivalry at all times, to protect fair maiden from all who might do her harm.

And Ginny hated it.  Hates it still.

She doesn’t need protection. 

She hasn’t had protection since she got to school and does just fine without it.

But no.

That’s not true.

Harry’s protected her.  Harry’s saved her.

The thought makes her smile, almost as much as hearing Hermione point out how Harry walks with a spring in his step ever time he’s reminded that she’s no longer with Dean.

* * *

She supposes she could at least feel ok about the fact that she feels bad wanting Harry when she is with Dean.  That she feels like a bad person. 

It doesn’t stop her, of course.  But part of her wonders if she ever could be a good person, after the Diary.

Harry makes her believe that she can.

* * *

She cries herself to sleep after Slughorn’s party.  She goes, but Harry is completely engrossed in conversations with Luna, then he disappears for a while. 

She’s not jealous of Luna, she swears she’s not.  She knows that Harry does not look at her friend the way he looks at her.  But he did not see her the whole night even though she saw him, watched him when Dean wasn’t looking.

She fucks Dean in a broom cupboard before they go back to Gryffindor Tower. 

It only makes her feel worse, and when he helps her through the portrait hole again, aglow in a post-coital haze, she wants to scream at him. 

Instead, she smiles, says she had a wonderful time, kisses him, and makes for the girl’s staircase.

Tears happen before she reaches the fifth year dorm and by the time she sees herself in the mirror, half of her makeup has been washed away.

She feels pathetic.

* * *

When she grows up, she decides she wants to be Minerva McGonagall. 

* * *

The days she likes best are the ones when she ends up lying on Hermione’s bed, staring up at the hangings while Hermione reads a book and strokes her head.

Hermione has always been very good at taking care of her the right way, the way, she imagines, an older sister would. 

Hermione doesn’t ask questions, and doesn’t try to make her feel bad about what she thinks and why she thinks it. 

When Hermione does ask questions, they are the right ones.  When she is upset, or when she is gleeful, or when she is lonely.  Hermione rolls her eyes when Ron tries to make her feel bad about snogging Dean (not knowing that she sucked Dean’s cock earlier that very afternoon).  Hermione sees Ron’s hypocrisy for not bugging Dean about what he does with her.

Sometimes, Hermione says something that makes her seem to be in love with Ron though, and Ginny feels a sense of elation at the idea that Hermione might _actually_ be her sister one day.

She sometimes feels bad for Hermione that she doesn’t have any siblings.  But Hermione makes her feel bad that not one of her brothers is a girl.

* * *

It’s not Death Eaters she’s scared of. 

She can fight. 

Bill tells her she’s always been a fighter, and she knows that that’s true.  She’s not afraid of pain, not afraid of dying, not afraid of hurting others.

But when Malfoy throws the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, she’s terrified. 

This darkness is dry, not like the Chamber.  But it presses so persistently against her eyes, and her frantic cries of _Lumos! Incendio!_ do nothing.  She feels her breath coming more shallow, feels her chest compressing in panic.

She’s never been gladder of Ron, when he grabs her wrist shouting “Back this way!” and drags her to the light.

When they have rounded the corner, they run straight into Lupin and the others.  Ron’s telling them what happened, and she’s trying very hard to make her face look as determined as she feels not to be terrified.

* * *

She’s glad that none of her breakups were as bad as Tonks’ being abandoned-rejected-whatever-you-want-to-call-it by Lupin.  She’d been sad for a while about Michael, and she’d felt strange when Dean was over.  But she hadn’t spent almost a year heartbroken and depressed.

Tonks was the most vibrant and funny person she knew, and it terrified Ginny to see her mousy hair and sad brown eyes.

She was scared of anything that could break Tonks that way.

And she was scared, because she knew if anyone could break her the way that Lupin had broken Tonks, it was Harry.

* * *

Sometimes, she wonders if she just needs to be needed. 

She doesn’t need people, per se.  She doesn’t need Ron to protect her, or Dean.  She doesn’t even need Hermione to spare her feelings.

But she thinks that she does need to be something, whether reliable and brave, or strong and supportive, to someone.

* * *

Sometimes every day feels like a war. 

A war not to be herself, when that’s all she’s told to be.

To everyone else, she’s Ginny Weasley—pretty, funny, clever, talented Ginny.  Maybe they think of her as the head Gryffindor chaser (at least since Katie).  Maybe they think of her as Ron’s more with-it younger sister, or Fred’s and George’s mischievous heir.  Maybe they think of her (and there are fewer and fewer of these each year) of the girl who once sent Harry Potter a singing dwarf valentine. 

Ginny doesn’t know what she is anymore.  But she knows that she’s not any of that.

She doesn’t think she can be herself anymore.  She thinks that “real Ginny” broke at the age of eleven, was put back together by Bill and Mum and memories of Harry saving her, and had to grow, despite the imperfections of their mending.  The growing hurt, with things meeting resistance where they shouldn’t, recalling old pains and fears that should never have been there in the first place. 

Some things had not made it back into her.  Innocence, openness, faith, trust—all gone.

She thinks it would hurt more to take herself apart and put it all back together the right way.  She decides it’s not worth the trouble.

* * *

When Harry kisses her after the match, it feels better than sex.

She’s never been one for romance, never been one for sappiness.  She doesn’t think about how she feels whole again (though she does), or how nothing has ever been more right (though it hasn’t).

She shivers all the way down to her toes, her heart pounds in her chest she feels a familiar warmth between her legs, and for one moment, she’s completely terrified of what has just happened. 

Terrified that he’ll back away, look to Ron, and mutter something about how she’s Ron’s sister and he can’t. 

He does look to Ron when they break apart, and she hopes that her shattering world doesn’t appear on her face.  It shouldn’t.  She’s good at hiding things now.

But a moment later, he’s gesturing wordlessly towards the portrait hole and they are headed out, and she feels more triumphant than she has ever felt in her life.

* * *

Ron hates Slytherins.  He says it proudly. 

She lets him.

But she knows he can’t hate them more than she does.

* * *

Mum is always ecstatic whenever she comes through the door, her baby girl come home safe again.

She helps her mother cook, she decorates the sitting room for Christmas, she degnomes the garden without being asked.  She prattles away about whatever is going on in her life—this year, Dean, and Slughorn’s party.  She leaves out the gory details, but she thinks mum knows what might be _really_ at the heart of her sadness.

Mum offers her hot chocolate, and reminisces at great length about the first boy she dated, and Ginny feels loved.  No, not loved.  Precious.  Adored. 

She laughs freely with her mother, and does her best to ignore her mother’s glances over at the _mortal perils_ on the clock. 

She can’t feel as though she is in _mortal peril_ when her mother is explaining _why_ she and Otto Grinslowe broke up.  Nothing bad ever happens at home. 

* * *

She knows he’s going to leave in the end.  She knows he’s waiting to say it, and she knows it’s not because he doesn’t feel what she feels.

She also senses that he has no idea what it might once have done to her.  She’s proud of that.

She lies on the grass in the sunshine.  They are by the lake.  Ron and Hermione have gone inside for dinner, but Harry wants to stay and watch the sunset.  He likes the sunset.

She runs her fingers over his shirt, finding the hem of it, which has come loose from their day lazing about on the grass.  Her fingers toy with it, with the black hair that’s moving from his belly button to the waistband of his jeans, and she feels her stomach tighten.

But she doesn’t do anything, she just touches him lightly until he flips onto his side and kisses her.

Things are about to go to hell, but she thinks she can take it.  She’s been through hell.

 


End file.
